William Dobson was a portraitist and one of the first significant English painters, praised by his contemporary John Aubrey as "the most excellent painter that England has yet bred". He died relatively young and his final years were disrupted by the English Civil War.
Nicholas Hawksmoor was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
Master of the King's Music is a post in the Royal Household of the United Kingdom. The holder of the post originally served the monarch of England, directing the court orchestra and composing or commissioning music as required.
John Evelyn was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.
Nicholas Lanier, sometimes Laniere was an English composer and musician; the first to hold the title of Master of the King's Music from 1625 to 1666, an honour given to musicians of great distinction. He was the court musician, a composer and performer and Groom of the Chamber in the service of King Charles I and Charles II. He was also a singer, lutenist, scenographer and painter.
Philip Howard, 13th Earl of Arundel was an English nobleman. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Howard lived mainly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; he was charged with being a Catholic, quitting England without leave, and sharing in Jesuit plots. For this, he was sent to the Tower of London in 1585. Howard spent ten years in the Tower, until his death from dysentery.
Augustus Henry FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton,, styled Earl of Euston between 1747 and 1757, was a British Whig statesman of the Georgian era. He is one of a handful of dukes who have served as prime minister.
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon KG PC, was an English nobleman and courtier. He was the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, William Shakespeare's playing company. The son of Mary Boleyn, he was a cousin of Elizabeth I.
Emilia Lanier, néeAemilia Bassano, was an English poet and the first woman in England to assert herself as a professional poet, through her volume Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Attempts have been made to equate her with Shakespeare's "Dark Lady".
Euston Hall is a country house, with park by William Kent and Capability Brown, located in Euston, a small village in Suffolk located just south of Thetford, England. It is the family home of the Dukes of Grafton.
William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury,, known as Viscount Cranborne from 1605 to 1612, was an English peer, nobleman, and politician.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger was an English composer and viol player of Italian descent. He straddles the line between the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
Nicholas Lanier the Elder was a French musician who played the flute and the cornett.
Clement Lanier was an English musician and recorder player.
Lovers Made Men, alternatively titled The Masque of Lethe or The Masque at Lord Hay's, was a Jacobean era masque, written by Ben Jonson, designed by Inigo Jones, and with music composed by Nicholas Lanier. It was performed on Saturday 22 February 1617, and was significant in the development and acceptance of opera in seventeenth-century England.
The Serjeant Painter was an honourable and lucrative position as court painter with the English monarch. It carried with it the prerogative of painting and gilding all of the King's residences, coaches, banners, etc. and it grossed over £1,000 in a good year by the 18th century. The work itself involved painting the palaces, coaches, royal barges, and all sorts of decorations for festivities, which often had to be designed as well. The actual involvement of the serjeant painters in this gradually declined. The post itself fell out of use in the 18th century, after a period when "fine art" painters were appointed, and expected to supervise rather than execute decorative painting, for a good salary.
Elizabeth Rogers' Virginal Book is a musical commonplace book compiled in the mid-seventeenth century by a person or persons so far unidentified. Of all the so-called English "virginal books" this is the only one to mention the name of the instrument in the title, the others being so-called at a far later date.
Christopher Gibbons was an English composer and organist of the Baroque period. He was the second son, and first surviving child of the composer Orlando Gibbons.
Thomas Pierce or Peirse (1622–1691) was an English churchman and controversialist, a high-handed President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dean of Salisbury.
